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Friday, October 14, 2011

End behavior!

Blogging is so not on my list of things to do today... but I had a comment that I couldn't resist posting!

My Honors Precalc kids did their Polynomial Photo project last week (or so) where they used geogebra to fit a polynomial function to a picture they'd uploaded. (Links here and here.) I added some requirements to it this year - instead of just finding a polynomial, they also had to find its zeros and end-behavior. When I entered the grades for the project on our online gradebook, I included in the comments what they'd left out so the kids could see why they didn't get some points.

One of the girls came in today saying that her parents sat her down last night to have a "talk" with her. They'd seen "end behavior" as a comment and thought that it referred to her behavior in class. She then had to explain exactly what end behavior is and why she missed her points.

I thought that was hysterical! (Keep in mine that this is a good kid who LOVES math and wants to be some sort of mathematician in the future.)

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Another "Fun Fraction Friday" in Algebra 1 today! Although they complain about fractions, I honestly think these silly freshmen would be disappointed if we didn't do them. When I see kids in the hall before class on Fridays they always ask if we're going to do Fun Fraction Friday. So funny.

And to make it even better, today I gave them a bunch of word problems, too! (like, "this train left point A at this time traveling this speed... when will it meet the other train") It was a momentous day for us. And yet they still had fun, thought that solving the consecutive integer problems was "cool", and the other word problems were "so easy". Seriously? Who are these kids?!

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Looking through the results of the fractal activities from last week (I know, I know. I'll never catch up.) The last question they were to answer was "What's the relationship between fractals and complex numbers?"

One boy's answer:
It's complicated, but they're trying to get it together. Fractals has a problem with commitment but he loves complex numbers and wants the relationship to work out. Complex numbers loves fractals just the same as she did when they first met, every kiss to her feels just like the first again, she wants fractals to put a ring on her finger but she doesn't want to rush him.

Total BS? A funny way of getting around finding the real answer? He's lucky that it's Friday and I'm in a good mood. :)